You know sometimes I get a little sick and tired of these diversity for the sake of diversity threads. It gets annoying that every time I go on a forum you see people complain that there is a lack of something in a game so they're going to veto it. When people start making their decisions based around the sexuality, race or gender of a character, it's just as bad as racism for me because it's kind of a like a reverse racism, like people actually look at a title and think "Ugh, not enough black people in this game, I think I'll pass," or things like "Wow, nobody is gay here, think I'm going to leave it." This whole thing with the female Link like they're expecting Nintendo to drop a male character that has been established for years and suddenly adopt a Mass Effect type system allowing players to choose if Link is a male or female. Then do we choose whether he's black, white or Asian? Within the context of Asian, are we talking oriental or middle eastern? Can we choose whether he's gay or straight? Can we choose what gender he actual identifies as and if he is pansexual or a-sexual? It's like the whole Nadine thing in Uncharted all over again even though Kratos is a caucasian character that's had two black actors play him.
Needlessly to say right now people have probably read that and are outraged, but I'd ask before replying to my comment, you take a moment to read this next section.
I am a stereotypical male white (British if you want to know) person and I don't judge games based on any kind of the things we are discussing here and I want to stress that I agree with Shawn Layden who rightly said that we need to show a little more love to everyone right now, not just for the LGBT community after what happened in Orlando, but people being discriminated against for whatever reason the aggressors choose. I want to be clear that I do not discriminate unfairly against anyone because of their religion, age, sex, race or perceived gender.
I take a look at some of the games I really love and I see that there is already diversity within that space. I'm currently playing through Primal on PlayStation 4 which is a PlayStation 2 title from 2003 that has a female lead character and is very much about a feminine heroine. The best Grand Theft Auto game I ever played was San Andreas and I loved CJ and the whole Grove crew. (I live in a place called Rose Grove and the dick head chavs here identify as the Grove crew so that hit close to home.) I could relate to him as a character, I rooted for him and I thought he made a great lead character for that story. I also preferred Lamar and Franklin to Michael and Trevor in Grand Theft Auto V which might come as a surprise to some.
I played Mortal Kombat X when it came out and I was surprised to learn that Kung Jin was gay. I didn't suddenly hate him as a character but I thought it was an interesting development that fleshed out his character and gave more reason as to why he passed on joining the monks of the Wu Shi academy. When I played Starhawk, I had a great time and never for a moment thought that I wanted Emmett to be anything other than who he is. Infact one of my favourite games of all time is Shadow Man and that's a title about a black super hero protagonist based on a Valiant comic. I take a look at Horizon Zero Dawn and I'm all down for that because I love the look of the game and I think Aloy is a great character, the same way I love Kat in Gravity Rush. Okay, Kat is from time to time over sexualised somewhat but it doesn't change the fact that she kicks ass and I really enjoying playing as her.
Prototype 2 and The Walking Dead are two more examples of games with black protagonists that I really enjoyed playing. I played a lot of Tomb Raider and Blood Rayne throughout my life because they had really strong female leads which I very much enjoyed. Aveline in Assassins Creed on Vita was a black female character which again, was a great game that I enjoyed.
I'm the stereotype that people tend to associate with the reason why there isn't diversity in games. I would argue that there is diversity in games and it is growing. We can see more games about black people, asian people, gay people or people from all walks of life. I'm going to love them and enjoy them no matter what. While I feel there is a responsibility on the developers side to be creating these games, I think people can be too vocal or judgmental about games where they don't have the level of diversity that they want and some times it ruins the fun of games for me. Too many times we've squabbled over these topics and ignored all the good stuff in front of us.
If you really consider this game to be another white washed project with nothing to offer you based on the colour of people alone, then fine. I'd argue you're going to potentially miss out on what looks like a great game because you have personally made colour an issue. If that is your mantra or your feelings then fair enough, we can agree to disagree. But I put it to you that if Kara was a black female protagonist who was a Lesbian I would still love the game because those details don't affect my opinion like that. I want to experience a great game with great characters and great game play. I'm happy to criticise a character for their flaws, I'm happy to say when a character is literally just a bad character. Like the stereotypical black woman in Deus Ex Human Revolution, that seemed to me like a bad character made in poor taste. However, I'm not about to write a game off because it's too 'white.' I feel that it's almost a little racist to imply that you're going to miss this game because the characters are white. Racism goes all ways, and it's not just against black people or asian people.
All I'm saying, if anything, is that I fit a stereotype that I don't feel that I am a part of. I'm going to give this game a chance and allow myself the opportunity to have a great time or be disappointed. I admit my opinion might not count for much because I haven't personally been to Detroit or the USA, but I don't feel that should stop me having an opinion on this game or feel as though it is too white, black, asian or what ever to enjoy. Let's spread some love people. Peace.
I don't remember people complaining too much about Martin Lawrence in Black Knight. Just saying.